Description

This will hopefully be a secure chat web application that is implemented in a very secure way - using cryptographic principles to ensure that the messages sent between the clients are impossible to be read by a third party.

Install the needed dependencies

Run

npm install
cd client 
npm install

to download both the server and react client needed dependencies.

How to run

You could either run

npm run startAll 

to run both the server and react client scripts at the same time, or run

PORT=9000 npm start

in the home directory to start the server and then on a different terminal run

cd client
npm start

To build the client for production:

cd client
npm run build
serve -s build -l 3210

How does it work?

TODO When a user opens the page to create a new connection, they can input a secret. This secret is meant to prove that the user is who they say they are, because a link will be shared through a somewhat untrusted medium. It will not function as a "password" type of shared secret, because it will be shared in plain text, but it should be used to somehow identify the initiator of the connection. It could even be a sentence or even a paragraph. It would be best if the secret is decided through a safe medium, but if absolutely necessary, it could be a previously shared secret that both parties can recognize. This secret could also be empty, so the user decides if it is really needed.

When the secret is chosen, the browser will sign the secret with a generated RSA private key, and will send the public key of the client, together with the signed secret to the server. This is important, because in this way the other client can be sure that the public key is also authentic.

After the second client accepts the secret (or lack thereof) a connection is established and the public key of the second client is sent to the server and the server will pass the key to the initiator client. Then after the initiator client receives the information of the second client, the two clients can choose a secret that will be used to encrypt all messages between the two parties. It is important to note that the server does not have access to the secret, because the two clients both generate 16 random secret bytes that will together be used as the shared secret.